Ontario’s car pool embargo

Posted on November 22, 2008 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
FP Comment
November 22, 2008

With governmental blessings, you can car pool from home to work, but only under certain conditions.

Governments want us to maximize car pooling to take excess cars off the road, to save energy, and to clean up the environment, right?

Wrong, if the government is Ontario and provincial. In Ontario, car pooling is a prohibited activity that can only be allowed under strict government control, as determined by a government regulatory agency set up to oversee such conduct. Those who violate the law — as did a nonplused outfit called PickupPal — can and will be punished with the full force of the law. With the government’s blessings, you can share expenses by car pooling from home to work and back again, but only under certain conditions. You have crossed the line if you try to car pool to work across a municipal boundary — the government frowns upon suburbanites who commute this way. As for car pooling for a frivolous, non-work purpose — to school, to the hockey arena, to the doctor’s office — this is outlawed outright, regardless of whether you cross a municipal boundary.

Ontario places other restrictions, too, on car pooling. First, you must demonstrate dedication by sticking to the same driver, day in day out. You can’t catch a ride with Peter on Mondays if Paul picks you up Tuesdays. And you must never, ever be prompt in reimbursing your driver for your share of the ride. Once a week or once a month is fine. Try to pay more frequently and you’ll get pulled off to the side of the road if you get caught.

PickupPal, an Internet startup not yet one year old, is a phenom that already operates in over 100 countries, over 1000 lower-level jurisdictions such as states and provinces, and tens of thousands of municipalities. Only Ontario, through its Ontario Highway Transportation Board, has clamped down on it, an irony since PickupPal is based in Ontario. The transportation board — established by the government to protect local bus monopolies — last week fined PickupPal $11,000 and cost it $30,000 in legal fees after a chartered bus company filed a complaint.

PickupPal is now lobbying to have the government relax restrictions on car pooling and — given how ludicrous the current car pool rules are — it may well succeed. Yet PickupPal’s regulatory problems are unlikely to end, particularly if it continues to grow rapidly. Transportation monopolies exist throughout the world, most importantly in road services. If PickupPal — which makes it easy for passengers to find drivers willing to go from Point A to Point B — is allowed to operate without restriction, not only bus but also taxi monopolies would be doomed. This innovative start-up using geopositioning technology could soon be as threatening to the status quo as the automobile was to the horse and buggy.

The choice for governments would then be stark: To back tomorrow’s vibrant high-tech growth industries or yesterday’s outdated monopolies. Clearly, governments should decide on the former and will decide on the latter.

Posted in Automobile | Leave a comment

Transportation

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Other News Sources

Transportation

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Curabitur id est tincidunt nisl pellentesque tincidunt. Donec in mauris. Mauris neque magna, consectetuer id, malesuada vitae, tincidunt sit amet, mi. Aliquam lacinia. Suspendisse potenti. Proin justo lorem, rutrum ac, facilisis in, malesuada sed, ligula. Mauris lobortis lacus at nibh. Aenean vitae odio vel odio placerat hendrerit. Suspendisse lacus lacus, tempor id, pharetra eget, ornare sit amet, pede. Sed aliquet, justo ac elementum pretium, arcu leo placerat est, a luctus purus diam eget arcu. Nam augue diam, mollis a, scelerisque eget, aliquet condimentum, pede. Vestibulum tristique lectus sed augue

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Curabitur id est tincidunt nisl pellentesque tincidunt. Donec in mauris. Mauris neque magna, consectetuer id, malesuada vitae, tincidunt sit amet, mi. Aliquam lacinia. Suspendisse potenti. Proin justo lorem, rutrum ac, facilisis in, malesuada sed, ligula. Mauris lobortis lacus at nibh. Aenean vitae odio vel odio placerat hendrerit. Suspendisse lacus lacus, tempor id, pharetra eget, ornare sit amet, pede. Sed aliquet, justo ac elementum pretium, arcu leo placerat est, a luctus purus diam eget arcu. Nam augue diam, mollis a, scelerisque eget, aliquet condimentum, pede. Vestibulum tristique lectus sed augue

Posted in Transportation | Leave a comment

False hope for global unity

Posted on October 31, 2008 by Other News Sources

National Post
October 31, 2008

An Obama presidency will not end anti-Americanism.
My American friends believe that, after Barack Obama becomes president, America will once again be loved around the world. They are wishful thinkers.

Anti-Americanism didn’t begin with George Bush and it won’t end with an Obama presidency. With rare exceptions, America has always inspired hatred and contempt, and for reasons that aren’t about to go away. Those who expect America’s haters to convert on November 4 need to get out more.

I first noticed anti-Americanism abroad as a teen from Canada living in Paris in 1967 – Americans were commonly held in contempt in the 5th Republic of Charles De Gaulle (1958-69), who glorified France by slurring the U.S., and who explicitly sought to undermine U.S. stature in the world. As was popular among French intellectuals, De Gaulle decried America’s ‘arrogance of power’and its soulless materialism.

Then I noticed anti-Americanism in a trip around the world in 1973, and so did the many Americans I crossed paths with in youth hostels and cafes. Their backpacks could be counted on to display the Canadian flag, the better to avoid unpleasantries (German youths, reviled for their country’s Nazi past, sported backpacks with Swiss flags). All told, I have visited some 60 countries over the last 40 years. With the general exception of the then-Communist countries, the sentiment – at least among the reform-minded people I tended to associate with – was overwhelmingly anti-American.

The bitter criticisms of the U.S. often confused me. Anil Agarwal, a prominent environmentalist (now-deceased) from India for whom I had the greatest respect, decried the ‘Coca Cola-ization’ of the Third World (this was circa 1980 – today we would call this ‘globalization’). You can visit the poorest, most remote village, he lamented, and you will see Coca Cola signs, and people drinking Coca Cola, despite the expense.

But why blame Coca Cola or America?, I asked, particularly perplexed because Anil was inspired by the villager’s knowledge and resourcefulness, and was an outspoken proponent of individual and community control. If villagers voluntarily purchase Coca Cola, why would Anil object?

Anil never did answer in a way I found satisfying, other than expressing a discomfort that the U.S. had become too powerful, that its corporations’ reach had become too extensive, that the U.S. presence had gone too far. It was then common to decry ‘U.S. imperialism’, although the U.S. never sought or got much of a colonial empire, unlike Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Italy, which between them militarily conquered and colonized much of Africa, Asia and the Americas. ‘U.S. imperialism’ was short for ‘U.S. economic imperialism,’ meaning that the U.S. was attempting to control the world marketplace through often nefarious non-military means, including covert support for dictators.

America’s military, of course, inspires resentment and hatred when it engages in war – witness the reaction today to the war in Iraq, or a generation ago to the Vietnam War. But America’s military also inspires contempt for its passivity. During the First World War, the German Kaiser repeatedly claimed that America would not fight, whatever the provocation; President Woodrow Wilson, with his policy of ‘watchful waiting,’ bore him out for years, entering the war only at the end and after being attacked. Roosevelt, likewise, entered the Second World War late, and after America was attacked.

The view around the world that America doesn’t have the stomach for a fight remains – Muslim extremists took this lesson from Reagan’s flight from Beirut in 1984 and Clinton’s from Somalia in 1993. American restraint following the first World Trade Center attack, the embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole confirmed this analysis prior to 9/11, as did the anti-war movement during the Vietnam war, as does the anti-war movement now. Whether the loathing for America is greater when it fights or when it does not is arguable; not arguable is that the U.S. has been loathed regardless of its military stance.

The most enduring of the stereotypes that denigrate the U.S. is that of the Ugly American, a best-selling book that came out in 1958, and then became a Marlon Brando movie. This American is loud and tasteless, insensitive to other cultures. A boor, and not one in uniform, the ugly American came to represent the American tourist above all, but also corporate big-wigs and stay-at-home slobs. This characterization was nothing new, however. An earlier America hater, Charles Dickens, in 1844 painted Americans in an equally boorish light and America as ‘so maimed and lame, so full of sores and ulcers, foul to the eye and almost hopeless to the sense, that her best friends turn from the loathsome creature with disgust.’ Almost a century earlier still, the French had decided that the natural environment in the Americas was not conducive to producing hardy flora or fauna, and that humans who settled there would become degenerate. Voltaire was one exponent of this view, the French encyclopedist Abbe Raynal another: ‘America has not yet produced a good poet, an able mathematician, one man of genius in a single art or a single science,’ he concluded in 1770, setting off a debate among such men as Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson, who now had to defend themselves from attack by their more cultured critics across the sea.

Many, many scholars have examined the phenomenon of anti-Americanism, some likening it to a kind of secular religion that explains all the world’s evils, from poverty and injustice to wars and environmental destruction. My explanation is less complicated: America is an unparalleled success, and with success comes envy and resentment, especially of those who don’t have it.

The world has seen other great military powers – the ancient Romans, the Ottomans, the British. None has extended its military reach throughout the planet, as has the U.S. Neither has any one nation before so dominated the world economy – the U.S. represents 25% of world GDP. Neither has any one nation so dominated technological advancement – the U.S. soars in scientific achievements, whether measured by the number of Nobel Prizes won or the number of patents acquired. Neither, and most gallingly, has any one nation ever dominated culture so thoroughly. From Hollywood to Broadway to TV, from music to clothing to food, America is everywhere supreme. This Coca-Cola-McDonalds-Starbucks culture may be reviled but it cannot be disputed.

Finally, America is loathed because its brand of free-market capitalism remains ascendant, having outperformed European-style socialism and utterly defeated Communism, ideologies that attract many if not most of the world’s intellectuals. More than two centuries since its founding, the U.S. shows no sign of losing either its economic or military supremacy.

Will the world pay obeisance to U.S. superiority should President Obama take office? French president Sarkozy reportedly characterized Obama’s stance on Iran as ‘utterly immature’ and comprised of ‘formulations empty of all content.’ Worse, he believes, Obama is ‘arrogantly’ displaying a willingness to act unilaterally in talking to Iran without preconditions, ignoring the consensus forged by France, Germany and other members on the UN Security Council. The EU’s trade commissioner called Obama’s advocacy of trade protectionism ‘irresponsible’ and a ‘mirage,’ the UK’s foreign secretary echoed trade concerns.

America will be America after Nov 4. Anti-Americanism is safe.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute.

Photo: Supporters of Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr burn American flags. (Kareem Kaheem/Reuters)

 

Posted in Cities, Culture | Leave a comment

False hope for global unity

Posted on October 31, 2008 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
October 31, 2008

My American friends believe that, after Barack Obama becomes president, America will once again be loved around the world. They are wishful thinkers.

Anti-Americanism didn’t begin with George Bush and it won’t end with an Obama presidency. With rare exceptions, America has always inspired hatred and contempt, and for reasons that aren’t about to go away. Those who expect America’s haters to convert on November 4 need to get out more.

I first noticed anti-Americanism abroad as a teen from Canada living in Paris in 1967 – Americans were commonly held in contempt in the 5th Republic of Charles De Gaulle (1958-69), who glorified France by slurring the U.S., and who explicitly sought to undermine U.S. stature in the world. As was popular among French intellectuals, De Gaulle decried America’s “arrogance of power” and its soulless materialism.

Then I noticed anti-Americanism in a trip around the world in 1973, and so did the many Americans I crossed paths with in youth hostels and cafes. Their backpacks could be counted on to display the Canadian flag, the better to avoid unpleasantries (German youths, reviled for their country’s Nazi past, sported backpacks with Swiss flags). All told, I have visited some 60 countries over the last 40 years. With the general exception of the then-Communist countries, the sentiment – at least among the reform-minded people I tended to associate with – was overwhelmingly anti-American.

The bitter criticisms of the U.S. often confused me. Anil Agarwal, a prominent environmentalist (now-deceased) from India for whom I had the greatest respect, decried the “Coca Cola-ization” of the Third World (this was circa 1980 – today we would call this “globalization”). You can visit the poorest, most remote village, he lamented, and you will see Coca Cola signs, and people drinking Coca Cola, despite the expense.

But why blame Coca Cola or America?, I asked, particularly perplexed because Anil was inspired by the villager’s knowledge and resourcefulness, and was an outspoken proponent of individual and community control. If villagers voluntarily purchase Coca Cola, why would Anil object?

Anil never did answer in a way I found satisfying, other than expressing a discomfort that the U.S. had become too powerful, that its corporations’ reach had become too extensive, that the U.S. presence had gone too far. It was then common to decry “U.S. imperialism,” although the U.S. never sought or got much of a colonial empire, unlike Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Italy, which between them militarily conquered and colonized much of Africa, Asia and the Americas. “U.S. imperialism” was short for “U.S. economic imperialism,” meaning that the U.S. was attempting to control the world marketplace through often nefarious non-military means, including covert support for dictators.

America’s military, of course, inspires resentment and hatred when it engages in war – witness the reaction today to the war in Iraq, or a generation ago to the Vietnam War. But America’s military also inspires contempt for its passivity. During the First World War, the German Kaiser repeatedly claimed that America would not fight, whatever the provocation; President Woodrow Wilson, with his policy of “watchful waiting,” bore him out for years, entering the war only at the end and after being attacked. Roosevelt, likewise, entered the Second World War late, and after America was attacked.

The view around the world that America doesn’t have the stomach for a fight remains – Muslim extremists took this lesson from Reagan’s flight from Beirut in 1984 and Clinton’s from Somalia in 1993. American restraint following the first World Trade Center attack, the embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole confirmed this analysis prior to 9/11, as did the anti-war movement during the Vietnam war, as does the anti-war movement now. Whether the loathing for America is greater when it fights or when it does not is arguable; not arguable is that the U.S. has been loathed regardless of its military stance.

The most enduring of the stereotypes that denigrate the U.S. is that of the Ugly American, a best-selling book that came out in 1958, and then became a Marlon Brando movie. This American is loud and tasteless, insensitive to other cultures. A boor, and not one in uniform, the ugly American came to represent the American tourist above all, but also corporate big-wigs and stay-at-home slobs. This characterization was nothing new, however. An earlier America hater, Charles Dickens, in 1844 painted Americans in an equally boorish light and America as “so maimed and lame, so full of sores and ulcers, foul to the eye and almost hopeless to the sense, that her best friends turn from the loathsome creature with disgust.” Almost a century earlier still, the French had decided that the natural environment in the Americas was not conducive to producing hardy flora or fauna, and that humans who settled there would become degenerate. Voltaire was one exponent of this view, the French encyclopedist Abbe Raynal another: “America has not yet produced a good poet, an able mathematician, one man of genius in a single art or a single science,” he concluded in 1770, setting off a debate among such men as Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson, who now had to defend themselves from attack by their more cultured critics across the sea.

Many, many scholars have examined the phenomenon of anti-Americanism, some likening it to a kind of secular religion that explains all the world’s evils, from poverty and injustice to wars and environmental destruction. My explanation is less complicated: America is an unparalleled success, and with success comes envy and resentment, especially of those who don’t have it.

The world has seen other great military powers – the ancient Romans, the Ottomans, the British. None has extended its military reach throughout the planet, as has the U.S. Neither has any one nation before so dominated the world economy – the U.S. represents 25% of world GDP. Neither has any one nation so dominated technological advancement – the U.S. soars in scientific achievements, whether measured by the number of Nobel Prizes won or the number of patents acquired. Neither, and most gallingly, has any one nation ever dominated culture so thoroughly. From Hollywood to Broadway to TV, from music to clothing to food, America is everywhere supreme. This Coca-Cola-McDonalds-Starbucks culture may be reviled but it cannot be disputed.

Finally, America is loathed because its brand of free-market capitalism remains ascendant, having outperformed European-style socialism and utterly defeated Communism, ideologies that attract many if not most of the world’s intellectuals. More than two centuries since its founding, the U.S. shows no sign of losing either its economic or military supremacy.

Will the world pay obeisance to U.S. superiority should President Obama take office? French president Sarkozy reportedly characterized Obama’s stance on Iran as “utterly immature” and comprised of “formulations empty of all content.” Worse, he believes, Obama is “arrogantly” displaying a willingness to act unilaterally in talking to Iran without preconditions, ignoring the consensus forged by France, Germany and other members on the UN Security Council. The EU’s trade commissioner called Obama’s advocacy of trade protectionism “irresponsible” and a “mirage,” the UK’s foreign secretary echoed trade concerns.

America will be America after Nov 4. Anti-Americanism is safe.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute.

Photo: Supporters of Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr burn American flags. (Kareem Kaheem/Reuters)

Posted in Nation states | Leave a comment

Peace Coffee: Changing the world a cup at a time

Posted on October 25, 2008 by Other News Sources

Neal St. Anthony
Star Tribune
October 25, 2008

Every morning, Andy Lambert, a local Olympian in the sustainable-development movement, straps on his helmet, mounts his bicycle and begins a 20-mile ride that will take him, bike trailer in tow, to several stores, coffee shops and food cooperatives where he’ll deliver about 300 pounds of “Peace Coffee.”

“There’s something beautiful about physical labor that makes the soul rest easy at the end of a long day,” said the well-conditioned Lambert, who traded a desk job to pedal nearly 5,000 miles annually. “We at Peace Coffee hope that our mantra of ‘pedal not petrol’ inspires other companies to consider adding bicycle delivery to their business model.”

Oh, and there’s also a biodiesel-fueled Peace Coffee van, in addition to a couple of bike couriers.

Peace Coffee is a profitable, 10-year-old Minneapolis company with $3.1 million in annual sales that’s growing 20 percent annually. The company has installed a new $180,000, 2,800-pound Diedrich bean roaster at its expanded Minneapolis operation that will produce 150-pound batches of aromatic beans purchased at premium prices from small farmer cooperatives in developing countries.

The company is owned by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (www.iatp.org), a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that researches and advocates globally “to ensure fair and sustainable food, farm and trade systems.”

Peace Coffee is one of several dozen small coffee importers, roasters and distributors around the country that sprang up in protest to large-scale coffee farms owned by huge land owners who supply the world’s major coffee companies using open-field, big-agriculture practices.

“We are trying to show that you can buy and sell shade-grown coffee under this successful model of livable wages for small farmers, with no deforestation or pesticides or herbicides,” said Lee Wallace, director of Peace Coffee (www.peacecoffee.com). “Only when you put coffee out in sun-soaked fields do you have to add pesticides. We plan for growth, and growth is the way to get more money into the hands of small farmers.”

The strategy seems to be working. Peace Coffee sales are growing at traditional venues such as the Wedge, a longtime Minneapolis cooperative, as well as at suburban supermarkets such as Kowalski’s, where shoppers pay $8.99 to $10.99 a pound to buy blends of Peace Coffee in Woodbury and Eden Prairie.

Cooperative efforts

Peace Coffee is one of 24 “fair trade” coffee roasters that in 1999 formed Cooperative Coffees, an importing cooperative that was established to meet fair trade international certification and bypass traditional middlemen. To date, Cooperative Coffees has relationships with 20 coffee-growing cooperatives in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Ethiopia, Rwanda and elsewhere.

Cooperative Coffees pays about $2 a pound to farmer co-ops, compared with the $1.30 quoted recently on the New York commodities market. The cooperative also provides pre-financing and technical support and requires that farmers submit to a certification process that tests for sustainability practices and organic methods.

Conventional coffee farmers receive only about 2 cents of the $3 paid at retail for a coffee bistro latte, according to TransFair USA, a fair-trade group.

The fair-trade concept has existed for decades in the United States and Europe, but has begun to get mainstream traction over the past decade thanks to publicity and an international coalition of certifying organizations, such as the Fairtrade Labeling Organization and TransFair USA, the labeling organization for North America. The labeling process vets coffee, tea, chocolate and bananas and provides a fair-trade logo.

Fair trade controversy

The certification process has its critics, such as Lawrence Solomon, director of the Energy Probe Research Foundation of Canada, which analyzes trade and consumer issues. The requirement that the fair-trade moniker goes only to cooperative producers can discriminate against independents and larger companies that increasingly are embracing sustainability standards but don’t want to be part of a cooperative.

The fair traders have, at times, warred with Starbucks and other big coffee buyers who may buy a few fair-trade-certified lines, but otherwise say they are fair to growers and responsible environmentalists.

“Peace Coffee is a really solid business strategy and it is really responsible,” said Chris Eilers, president of Minneapolis-based Dunn Bros, a retail coffee business that doesn’t compete directly with Peace Coffee. “But ‘fair-trade certified’ is not the be-all end-all in coffee buying. If people jump on the simple philosophy of ‘fair trade’ it excludes [our] farmers in East Africa or small tribal growers in New Guinea. And for some of them, the concept of cooperatives and fair trade isn’t in their vocabulary. They may not be able to afford to be certified yet, but they deserve to be paid well for good coffee and environmental practices. We viEvery morning, Andy Lambert, a local Olympian in the sustainable-development movement, straps on his helmet, mounts his bicycle and begins a 20-mile ride that will take him, bike trailer in tow, to several stores, coffee shops and food cooperatives where he’ll deliver about 300 pounds of “Peace Coffee.” sit the farms directly or we buy from importers that have been there and can assure that sustainable practices are in place.”

“There’s something beautiful about physical labor that makes the soul rest easy at the end of a long day,” said the well-conditioned Lambert, who traded a desk job to pedal nearly 5,000 miles annually. “We at Peace Coffee hope that our mantra of ‘pedal not petrol’ inspires other companies to consider adding bicycle delivery to their business model.”

Oh, and there’s also a biodiesel-fueled Peace Coffee van, in addition to a couple of bike couriers.

Peace Coffee is a profitable, 10-year-old Minneapolis company with $3.1 million in annual sales that’s growing 20 percent annually. The company has installed a new $180,000, 2,800-pound Diedrich bean roaster at its expanded Minneapolis operation that will produce 150-pound batches of aromatic beans purchased at premium prices from small farmer cooperatives in developing countries.

The company is owned by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (www.iatp.org), a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that researches and advocates globally “to ensure fair and sustainable food, farm and trade systems.”

Peace Coffee is one of several dozen small coffee importers, roasters and distributors around the country that sprang up in protest to large-scale coffee farms owned by huge land owners who supply the world’s major coffee companies using open-field, big-agriculture practices.

“We are trying to show that you can buy and sell shade-grown coffee under this successful model of livable wages for small farmers, with no deforestation or pesticides or herbicides,” said Lee Wallace, director of Peace Coffee (www.peacecoffee.com). “Only when you put coffee out in sun-soaked fields do you have to add pesticides. We plan for growth, and growth is the way to get more money into the hands of small farmers.”

The strategy seems to be working. Peace Coffee sales are growing at traditional venues such as the Wedge, a longtime Minneapolis cooperative, as well as at suburban supermarkets such as Kowalski’s, where shoppers pay $8.99 to $10.99 a pound to buy blends of Peace Coffee in Woodbury and Eden Prairie.

Cooperative efforts

Peace Coffee is one of 24 “fair trade” coffee roasters that in 1999 formed Cooperative Coffees, an importing cooperative that was established to meet fair trade international certification and bypass traditional middlemen. To date, Cooperative Coffees has relationships with 20 coffee-growing cooperatives in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Ethiopia, Rwanda and elsewhere.

Cooperative Coffees pays about $2 a pound to farmer co-ops, compared with the $1.30 quoted recently on the New York commodities market. The cooperative also provides pre-financing and technical support and requires that farmers submit to a certification process that tests for sustainability practices and organic methods.

Conventional coffee farmers receive only about 2 cents of the $3 paid at retail for a coffee bistro latte, according to TransFair USA, a fair-trade group.

The fair-trade concept has existed for decades in the United States and Europe, but has begun to get mainstream traction over the past decade thanks to publicity and an international coalition of certifying organizations, such as the Fairtrade Labeling Organization and TransFair USA, the labeling organization for North America. The labeling process vets coffee, tea, chocolate and bananas and provides a fair-trade logo.

Fair Every morning, Andy Lambert, a local Olympian in the sustainable-development movement, straps on his helmet, mounts his bicycle and begins a 20-mile ride that will take him, bike trailer in tow, to several stores, coffee shops and food cooperatives where he’ll deliver about 300 pounds of “Peace Coffee.” trade controversy

“There’s something beautiful about physical labor that makes the soul rest easy at the end of a long day,” said the well-conditioned Lambert, who traded a desk job to pedal nearly 5,000 miles annually. “We at Peace Coffee hope that our mantra of ‘pedal not petrol’ inspires other companies to consider adding bicycle delivery to their business model.”

Oh, and there’s also a biodiesel-fueled Peace Coffee van, in addition to a couple of bike couriers.

Peace Coffee is a profitable, 10-year-old Minneapolis company with $3.1 million in annual sales that’s growing 20 percent annually. The company has installed a new $180,000, 2,800-pound Diedrich bean roaster at its expanded Minneapolis operation that will produce 150-pound batches of aromatic beans purchased at premium prices from small farmer cooperatives in developing countries.

The company is owned by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (www.iatp.org), a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that researches and advocates globally “to ensure fair and sustainable food, farm and trade systems.”

Peace Coffee is one of several dozen small coffee importers, roasters and distributors around the country that sprang up in protest to large-scale coffee farms owned by huge land owners who supply the world’s major coffee companies using open-field, big-agriculture practices.

“We are trying to show that you can buy and sell shade-grown coffee under this successful model of livable wages for small farmers, with no deforestation or pesticides or herbicides,” said Lee Wallace, director of Peace Coffee (www.peacecoffee.com). “Only when you put coffee out in sun-soaked fields do you have to add pesticides. We plan for growth, and growth is the way to get more money into the hands of small farmers.”

The strategy seems to be working. Peace Coffee sales are growing at traditional venues such as the Wedge, a longtime Minneapolis cooperative, as well as at suburban supermarkets such as Kowalski’s, where shoppers pay $8.99 to $10.99 a pound to buy blends of Peace Coffee in Woodbury and Eden Prairie.

Cooperative efforts

Peace Coffee is one of 24 “fair trade” coffee roasters that in 1999 formed Cooperative Coffees, an importing cooperative that was established to meet fair trade international certification and bypass traditional middlemen. To date, Cooperative Coffees has relationships with 20 coffee-growing cooperatives in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Ethiopia, Rwanda and elsewhere.

Cooperative Coffees pays about $2 a pound to farmer co-ops, compared with the $1.30 quoted recently on the New York commodities market. The cooperative also provides pre-financing and technical support and requires that farmers submit to a certification process that tests for sustainability practices and organic methods.

Conventional coffee farmers receive only about 2 cents of the $3 paid at retail for a coffee bistro latte, according to TransFair USA, a fair-trade group.

The fair-trade concept has existed for decades in the United States and Europe, but has begun to get mainstream traction over the past decade thanks to publicity and an international coalition of certifying organizations, such as the Fairtrade Labeling Organization and TransFair USA, the labeling organization for North America. The labeling process vets coffee, tea, chocolate and bananas and provides a fair-trade logo.

Fair trade controversy

The certification process has its critics, such as Lawrence Solomon, director of the Energy Probe Research Foundation of Canada, which analyzes trade and consumer issues. The requirement that the fair-trade moniker goes only to cooperative producers can discriminate against independents and larger companies that increasingly are embracing sustainability standards but don’t want to be part of a cooperative.

The fair traders have, at times, warred with Starbucks and other big coffee buyers who may buy a few fair-trade-certified lines, but otherwise say they are fair to growers and responsible environmentalists.

“Peace Coffee is a really solid business strategy and it is really responsible,” said Chris Eilers, president of Minneapolis-based Dunn Bros, a retail coffee business that doesn’t compete directly with Peace Coffee. “But ‘fair-trade certified’ is not the be-all end-all in coffee buying. If people jump on the simple philosophy of ‘fair trade’ it excludes [our] farmers in East Africa or small tribal growers in New Guinea. And for some of them, the concept of cooperatives and fair trade isn’t in their vocabulary. They may not be able to afford to be certified yet, but they deserve to be paid well for good coffee and environmental practices. We visit the farms directly or we buy from importers that have been there and can assure that sustainable practices are in place.”

Dunn Bros, which requires its franchisees to visit coffee farmers and get to know small growers and their practices, will spend about $3 million this year buying 1.2 million pounds of beans at premium wholesale prices.

“We are big enough and we are able to do this and we think it is the responsible way to behave in a developing country,” said Eilers, who began in 1993 as a single-store franchisee. “And it helps more coffee farmers get to economic independence. And consumers are more in tune with sustainability and are asking about it.”

Honest people can disagree on the best system to deliver premium coffee in a way that also rewards small growers and enhances the environment. But it’s becoming clear that more and more consumers are demanding small growers an ocean away get a fair deal.

The certification process has its critics, such as Lawrence Solomon, director of the Energy Probe Research Foundation of Canada, which analyzes trade and consumer issues. The requirement that the fair-trade moniker goes only to cooperative producers can discriminate against independents and larger companies that increasingly are embracing sustainability standards but don’t want to be part of a cooperative.

The fair traders have, at times, warred with Starbucks and other big coffee buyers who may buy a few fair-trade-certified lines, but otherwise say they are fair to growers and responsible environmentalists.

“Peace Coffee is a really solid business strategy and it is really responsible,” said Chris Eilers, president of Minneapolis-based Dunn Bros, a retail coffee business that doesn’t compete directly with Peace Coffee. “But ‘fair-trade certified’ is not the be-all end-all in coffee buying. If people jump on the simple philosophy of ‘fair trade’ it excludes [our] farmers in East Africa or small tribal growers in New Guinea. And for some of them, the concept of cooperatives and fair trade isn’t in their vocabulary. They may not be able to afford to be certified yet, but they deserve to be paid well for good coffee and environmental practices. We visit the farms directly or we buy from importers that have been there and can assure that sustainable practices are in place.”

Dunn Bros, which requires its franchisees to visit coffee farmers and get to know small growers and their practices, will spend about $3 million this year buying 1.2 million pounds of beans at premium wholesale prices.

“We are big enough and we are able to do this and we think it is the responsible way to behave in a developing country,” said Eilers, who began in 1993 as a single-store franchisee. “And it helps more coffee farmers get to economic independence. And consumers are more in tune with sustainability and are asking about it.”

Honest people can disagree on the best system to deliver premium coffee in a way that also rewards small growers and enhances the environment. But it’s becoming clear that more and more consumers are demanding small growers an ocean away get a fair deal.

Dunn Bros, which requires its franchisees to visit coffee farmers and get to know small growers and their practices, will spend about $3 million this year buying 1.2 million pounds of beans at premium wholesale prices.

“We are big enough and we are able to do this and we think it is the responsible way to behave in a developing country,” said Eilers, who began in 1993 as a single-store franchisee. “And it helps more coffee farmers get to economic independence. And consumers are more in tune with sustainability and are asking about it.”

Honest people can disagree on the best system to deliver premium coffee in a way that also rewards small growers and enhances the environment. But it’s becoming clear that more and more consumers are demanding small growers an ocean away get a fair deal.

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